oui

See also: ouï

English

Etymology

From French oui (“yes”).

Interjection

oui

  1. (quaint) Synonym of yes

Anagrams

French

Etymology

[1380]; from Old French oïl (1100), compound of o affirmative particle (compare Occitan òc ‘yes’) and il ‘he, him’, akin to o-je, o-tu, o nos, o vos, all ‘yes’ constructed with pronouns.[1] O and òc are both from Latin hoc ‘this’. Compare Portuguese isso ‘yes, yeah’, literally ‘this, that’. And the semantic shift is calqued on Gaulish: Compare fellow Celtic languages such as Old Irish tó ‘yes’, Welsh do ‘indeed’, from Proto-Indo-European *tod (“this, that”).[2]

Pronunciation

Adverb

oui

  1. yes

Antonyms

Interjection

oui

  1. yes

Usage notes

This word is treated as if it has an aspirated h despite not being written with an h.

Antonyms

Descendants

See also

  • si ("yes" used to contradict a negative statement or question)

References

  1. ↑ Trésor de la langue française informatisé, s.vv. ‘oui’, ‘oïl’,
  2. ↑ Peter Schrijver, Studies in the History of Celtic Pronouns and Particles, Maynooth, 1997, 15.

Further reading

Norman

Etymology

From Old French oïl, a contraction of o il, from Vulgar Latin hoc ille.

Adverb

oui

  1. (Guernsey) yes

Interjection

oui

  1. (Guernsey) yes
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